Search is a critical component for information access when browsing a website on a computing device with a screen, e.g., a computer or a mobile device such as a so-called smart phone, e.g., an iPhone or an Android phone.
This invention dramatically improves information access through search of a website while browsing, especially when searching from a small screen device such as a mobile device.
Accessing information on the Internet, e.g., accessing information on one or more specific websites is done in two ways: top down menu link driven access (referred to herein as “the first method”), and search-based access (“the second method”). In the first method, a traditional top down menu or hypertext provides navigation to another Web page by clicking a hyperlink on a Web page, or by selecting a value from a menu dropdown-box. While the first method provides a structured way of accessing information, it may have drawbacks. Firstly, the first method assumes that a user accessing the information is familiar with the navigation hierarchy and topics therein. For example, it assumes that an user looking for a company's CEO's name, e.g., on the company's own website, would know to look for the “about us” or a similarly named link on the home Web page, and then “management” or a similar link, and then looking for the actual paragraph on the Web page. Additionally, the first method may limit the amount of information that is easily accessible, in that the ease of access goes down as the number of hyperlink clicks and scroll-downs required for the access increases. For example, finding a single lawyer's name on a law-firm website that has 180 lawyers, might require going through a list of 180 links in the “our team” or equivalent Web page, and quite a bit of scrolling—especially on a small screen device. The second method, i.e., searching enables a user to access information by entering (e.g., typing) a query of one or more words, or a phrase in a natural language in a search box. Search technologies make use of natural language processing algorithms and indexing of Web pages to find answers that could be a possible match to what the user entered.
Some of the more advanced search methods include an autocomplete functionality to accelerate entering a query. Once the user enters just a few characters in a search box, an autocomplete method immediately offers contextual and relevant query suggestions. The emphasis here is on the suggestion of one or more queries to the user. The object of autocomplete technology is to predict the user's query intent by considering the few keystrokes (characters) that have been entered. As more keystrokes are entered, the suggested queries may change.
Typical existing search methods that include an autocomplete method may be described by the following user process flow (hereinafter “Typical Existing Process”):                1. A user starts typing a query in a search box on a website.        2. While typing, the user may be offered a list, e.g., as a dropdown list of possible queries.        3. The user either selects one of the suggested queries, or fully enters the query in the box.        4. Search engine displays a results Web page.                    a. Each answer in the result Web page may include a few lines or a short paragraph, to allow users determine possible match to query.            b. Each answer is a link to a Web page.                        5. The user scans every result-paragraph on Web page to match for search intent.        6. The user scrolls through the list, often going through screens, until finding what appears to be a reasonable answer.        7. The user then clicks on the result Web page's link and navigates to the result Web page.        8. The user reads through the result Web page, and looks for the answer she was looking for throughout the Web page.        